Greetings @rcs, welcome to Connect. I am the caregiver for my life partner. He had very similar stats...69 years old...PSA in the 8 range and trending up aggressively. The key to treatment choices always includes an answer to the question.....is the tumor contained in the prostate or has it spread somewhere outside. An MRI will show you those results.

He chose surgery for the following reason: aggressive tumor growth yet still contained. So he started with hormone therapy to reduce the amount of testosterone that was being generated to feed the tumor. Then he had the surgery. Two years later when a cell on the bladder margin dropped into the prostate bed...his PSA started to climb. Then he had the proton therapy chosen for him.....30 consecutive days while in residence in Rochester.

While chatting with other patients we found every treatment plan to be slightly different depending on results along the journey to cancer free.

I am sure others will join in and reveal their treatment sequence. For example, Jay’s hormone treatment was for 3 months. His friend’s was for 5 weeks. That depends on the type of injection used based on the job to be done inside.

Some folks have 5 days of “beam” radiation....and others have 30 days like Jay did. Every day while in treatment there are meetings with clinicians and providers on the medical team assigned to take amazingly good care to watch for any symptoms that might require attention.

Good luck to you. If you are at Mayo Clinic you are in very, good hands.

Chris